The Doctor Who San Diego Comic-Con panel has just come to an end, with Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill and Steven Moffat answering fan questions and showing two new clips! Check out our full report for in-depth coverage.
As fans waited for the panel to begin, the massive crowds clapped along to the tune of a Timelord’s heartbeat. Every year Doctor Who comes to San Diego Comic-Con, the excitement is on a whole other level – and this year (with Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill bidding farewell to friends, fans, and their characters) anticipation reached fever pitch. The Nerdist’s Chris Hardwick entered in a TARDIS t-shirt to moderate the panel, introducing stars Matt Smith, Gillan and Darvill, along with showrunner Steven Moffat (who had missed out on the weekend’s festivities as he confined himself to a small room where he could continue to write) and producer Caroline Skinner. Fans welcomed their idols with thunderous cheers and a sea of sonic screwdrivers. Arthur joked that the reception made him feel “like Bon Jovi,” whilst Matt declared that the lack of cynicism made him think that, “if the world were more like Comic-Con, it would be a better place.”
When asked about the “Fall of the Ponds” — as Matt described it, to sheer devastation from the audience — Arthur said that filming their final scenes had been very exciting, while Karen admitted that she was crying for two weeks after the shoot. After that clip of Rory saying goodbye to an aged Amy in “The Girl Who Waited,” Moffat told fans that their final encounter with The Weeping Angels had been an incredibly tough episode to write. In response to a comment about “never being able to write out Amy and Rory completely” the writer replied, “You reckon? Enjoy the episode…”
Naturally, discussion turned to Karen and Arthur’s favourite thing about working on Doctor Who. The former picked episodes like “The Doctor’s Wife,” where the actors learn something new about aspects they thought they knew inside out — Arthur concurred, saying: “It’s great to get to play a character you know so well, and then get a script that surprises you.” After the Ponds got big laughs from impersonating each other (Karen’s Arthur was said to be superior), fans were treated to a clip from the Western themed “A Town Called Mercy,” written by Toby Whithouse.
A Roman, a kissagram and a 900-year-old alien walk into a bar. No, that’s not the set-up of a terrible joke — but the start of the clip as The Doctor and his companions enter a saloon. The Doctor approaches the barman to request a tea “with the bag left in” (in an authentic Western accent), but he is instead apprehended by the town undertaker who measures him and asks if he is an alien. Despite Amy and Rory’s best efforts, The Doctor answers in the affirmative and is promptly carted off.
Back in the room, a child in a home-made Dalek costume asked the Moff if we’d be seeing a multi-Doctor episode, but he refused to answer. He remained tight-lipped about the context of the question too, but admitted that it would prove to be very important. Attention turned back to Matt, Karen and Arthur, who chose the Fez, Kissagram suit, and Roman armour as their favourite costumes respectively. There were big laughs when the trio agreed that the Doctor Who Tumblr meetup had been their craziest fan experience to date, with Karen recalling that one fan grabbed her arm and asked if she was Matt’s girlfriend. Once she had denied the accusation, she was released from the grip with a casual, “that’s okay then.”
Matt suggested that he would love to see an Atlantis themed episode. Moffat countered this by listing three times in the show’s history that the Lost City had appeared, before declaring, “To hell with continuity, we could do it again!” Karen said she would like to see a person-shrinking piano, while Arthur wanted to see The Doctor join a rock band. When asked if they had ever been tempted to steal pieces of the TARDIS, Matt confessed they had all done so – with Karen owning up to sneaking binoculars off the set before her final scenes. The final question asked was about the actors’ strange habits, in response to which they described an “uncomfortable touching” game they played with guest stars to break the ice.
Steven Moffat had the last words, promising a bigger variety of episodes than ever before with an abundance of Daleks in the series opener which will air next month. As the panel came to a close, fans were treated to one last clip from the crazily titled “Dinosaurs on a Spaceship” which saw the Doctor assemble Queen Nefertiti, another Doctor, Amy, Rory, and Rory’s father to board the titular spaceship and face the titular dinosaurs.
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Photos: BBC America/Anglophenia
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